Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron (ca.

1353)
Translated by J.M. Rigg
Context
The Decameron is structured in a frame narrative, or frame tale.1 Boccaccio begins with a description of the Black
Death and a group of seven women and three men who flee from plague-ridden Florence to a villa in the
countryside of Fiesole for two weeks. To pass the time, each member of the party tells one story for each one of
the nights spent at the villa. Although fourteen days pass, two days each week are set aside; one day for chores
and one holy day during which no work is done. In this manner, one hundred stories are told by the end of the
two weeks.
Each of the ten characters is charged as King or Queen of the company for one of the ten days in turn. Each
character tells a tale of a unique individual’s personal experience. This charge extends to choosing the theme of
the stories for that day, and all but two days have topics assigned: examples of the power of fortune; examples
of the power of human will; love tales that end tragically; love tales that end happily; witty replies that save the
speaker; tricks that women play on men; tricks that people play on each other in general; examples of virtue.
Only Dioneo, who usually tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to tell a tale on any topic he wishes, due to
his wit.
Each day also includes a short introduction and conclusion to continue the frame of the tales by describing
other daily activities besides story-telling. These frame tale interludes frequently include transcriptions of Italian
folk songs. The interactions among tales in a day, or across days, as Boccaccio spins variations and reversals of
previous material, form a whole and not just a collection of stories.
Day IV, Novella 5.
Lisabetta’s brothers slay her lover: he appears to her in a dream, and shews her where he is buried: she privily disinters the head, and
sets it in a pot of basil, whereon she daily weeps a great while. The pot being taken from her by her brothers, she dies, not long after.
Elisa’s story ended, the king bestowed a few words of praise upon it, and then laid the burden of discourse upon
Filomena, who, full of compassion for the woes of Gerbino and his lady, heaved a piteous sigh, and thus began:
-- My story, gracious ladies, will not be of folk of so high a rank as those of whom Elisa has told us, but
perchance ‘twill not be less touching. ‘Tis brought to my mind by the recent mention of Messina, where the
matter befell.
Know then that there were at Messina three young men, that were brothers and merchants, who were left very
rich on the death of their father, who was of San Gimignano; and they had a sister, Lisabetta by name, a girl fair
enough, and no less debonair, but whom, for some reason or another, they had not as yet bestowed in marriage.
The three brothers had also in their shop a young Pisan, Lorenzo by name, who managed all their affairs, and
who was so goodly of person and gallant, that Lisabetta bestowed many a glance upon him, and began to regard
him with extraordinary favour; which Lorenzo marking from time to time, gave up all his other amours, and in
like manner began to affect her, and so, their loves being equal, ‘twas not long before they took heart of grace,
and did that which each most desired.
Wherein continuing to their no small mutual solace and delight, they neglected to order it with due secrecy,
whereby one night as Lisabetta was going to Lorenzo’s room, she, all unwitting, was observed by the eldest of
the brothers, who, albeit much distressed by what he had learnt, yet, being a young man of discretion, was
swayed by considerations more seemly, and, allowing no word to escape him, spent the night in turning the

1
The title is a combination of two Greek words meaning “ten” (δέκα déka) and "day" (ἡµέρα hēméra).
1
affair over in his mind in divers ways. On the morrow he told his brothers that which, touching Lisabetta and
Lorenzo, he had observed in the night, which, that no shame might thence ensue either to them or to their
sister, they after long consultation determined to pass over in silence, making as if they had seen or heard
nought thereof, until such time as they in a safe and convenient manner might banish this disgrace from their
sight before it could go further.
Adhering to which purpose, they jested and laughed with Lorenzo as they had been wont; and after a while
pretending that they were all three going forth of the city on pleasure, they took Lorenzo with them; and being
come to a remote and very lonely spot, seeing that ‘twas apt for their design, they took Lorenzo, who was
completely off his guard, and slew him, and buried him on such wise that none was aware of it. On their return
to Messina they gave out that they had sent him away on business; which was readily believed, because ‘twas
what they had been frequently used to do.
But as Lorenzo did not return, and Lisabetta questioned the brothers about him with great frequency and
urgency, being sorely grieved by his long absence, it so befell that one day, when she was very pressing in her
enquiries, one of the brothers said: -- “What means this? What hast thou to do with Lorenzo, that thou shouldst
ask about him so often? Ask us no more, or we will give thee such answer as thou deservest.” So the girl, sick at
heart and sorrowful, fearing she knew not what, asked no questions; but many a time at night she called
piteously to him, and besought him to come to her, and bewailed his long tarrying with many a tear, and ever
yearning for his return, languished in total dejection.
But so it was that one night, when, after long weeping that her Lorenzo came not back, she had at last fallen
asleep, Lorenzo appeared to her in a dream, wan and in utter disarray, his clothes torn to shreds and sodden; and
thus, as she thought, he spoke: -- “Lisabetta, thou dost nought but call me, and vex thyself for my long tarrying,
and bitterly upbraid me with thy tears; wherefore be it known to thee that return to thee I may not, because the
last day that thou didst see me thy brothers slew me.” After which, he described the place where they had buried
him, told her to call and expect him no more, and vanished.
The girl then awoke, and doubting not that the vision was true, wept bitterly. And when morning came, and she
was risen, not daring to say aught to her brothers, she resolved to go to the place indicated in the vision, and see
if what she had dreamed were even as it had appeared to her. So, having leave to go a little way out of the city
for recreation in company with a maid that had at one time lived with them and knew all that she did, she hied
her thither with all speed; and having removed the dry leaves that were strewn about the place, she began to dig
where the earth seemed least hard. Nor had she dug long, before she found the body of her hapless lover,
whereon as yet there was no trace of corruption or decay; and thus she saw without any manner of doubt that
her vision was true. And so, saddest of women, knowing that she might not bewail him there, she would gladly,
if she could, have carried away the body and given it more honourable sepulture elsewhere; but as she might not
so do, she took a knife, and, as best she could, severed the head from the trunk, and wrapped it in a napkin and
laid it in the lap of her maid; and having covered the rest of the corpse with earth, she left the spot, having been
seen by none, and went home.
There she shut herself up in her room with the head, and kissed it a thousand times in every part, and wept long
and bitterly over it, till she had bathed it in her tears. She then wrapped it in a piece of fine cloth, and set it in a
large and beautiful pot of the sort in which marjoram or basil is planted, and covered it with earth, and therein
planted some roots of the goodliest basil of Salerno, and drenched them only with her tears, or water perfumed
with roses or orange-blossoms. And ‘twas her wont ever to sit beside this pot, and, all her soul one yearning, to
pore upon it, as that which enshrined her Lorenzo, and when long time she had so done, she would bend over
it, and weep a great while, until the basil was quite bathed in her tears.
Fostered with such constant, unremitting care, and nourished by the richness given to the soil by the decaying
head that lay therein, the basil burgeoned out in exceeding great beauty and fragrance. And, the girl persevering
ever in this way of life, the neighbours from time to time took note of it, and when her brothers marvelled to see
her beauty ruined, and her eyes as it were evanished from her head, they told them of it, saying: -- “We have
observed that such is her daily wont.” Whereupon the brothers, marking her behaviour, chid her therefore once
or twice, and as she heeded them not, caused the pot to be taken privily from her. Which, so soon as she missed
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it, she demanded with the utmost instance and insistence, and, as they gave it not back to her, ceased not to wail
and weep, insomuch that she fell sick; nor in her sickness craved she aught but the pot of basil. Whereat the
young men, marvelling
velling mightily, resolved to see what the pot might contain; and having removed the earth they
espied the cloth, and therein the head, which was not yet so decayed, but that by the curled locks they knew it
for Lorenzo’ss head. Passing strange they found iit,
t, and fearing lest it should be bruited abroad, they buried the
head, and, with as little said as might be, took order for their privy departure from Messina, and hied them
thence to Naples.
The girl ceased not to weep and crave her pot, and, so weeping, died. Such was the end of her disastrous love;
but not a few in course of time coming to know the truth of the affair, there was one that made the song that is
still sung: to wit: --
A thief he was, I swear, A sorry Christian he,
That took my basil of Salerno
rno fair, etc.

John Keats. “Isabella,

Isabella, Or, The Pot of Basil”
Basil (1818))
“Isabella, or the Pot of Basil” (1818) is a narrative poem by John Keats ad adapted
apted from a story in Boccaccio’s
Boccaccio
Decameron (IV, 5). It tells the tale of a young woman whose family intend to marry her to “some
some high noble and
his olive trees”,, but who falls for Lorenzo, one of her brothers
brothers’ss employees. When the brothers learn of this
they murder Lorenzo and bury his body. His gghost host informs Isabella in a dream. She exhumes the body and
buries the head in a pot of basil which she tends obsessively, while pining away.

A story from Boccacio.

I.

Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!

Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love
Love’s eye!
They could not in the self-same mansion dwell
Without some stir of heart, some malady;
They could not sit at meals but feel how well
It soothed each to be the other by;
They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep
But to each other dream, and nightly weep
weep.

II.

With every morn their love grew tenderer,

With every eve deeper and tenderer still;
He might not in house, field, or garden stir,
But her full shape would all his seeing fill;
By William Holman Hunt (1863)

And his continual voice was pleasanter

To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;
Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,
She spoilt her half-done
done broidery with the same.

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III. VII.

He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch, So once more he had wak’d and anguished
Before the door had given her to his eyes; A dreary night of love and misery,
And from her chamber-window he would If Isabel’s quick eye had not been wed
catch To every symbol on his forehead high;
Her beauty farther than the falcon spies; She saw it waxing very pale and dead,
And constant as her vespers would he watch, And straight all flush’d; so, lisped tenderly,
Because her face was turn’d to the same “Lorenzo!”--here she ceas’d her timid quest,
skies; But in her tone and look he read the rest.
And with sick longing all the night outwear,
To hear her morning-step upon the stair. VIII.

IV. “O Isabella, I can half perceive

“That I may speak my grief into thine ear;
A whole long month of May in this sad plight “If thou didst ever any thing believe,
Made their cheeks paler by the break of “Believe how I love thee, believe how near
June: “My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve
“To morrow will I bow to my delight, “Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would
“To-morrow will I ask my lady’s boon.”-- not fear
“O may I never see another night, “Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live
“Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s “Another night, and not my passion shrive.
tune.”--
So spake they to their pillows; but, alas, IX.
Honeyless days and days did he let pass;
“Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,
V. “Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,
“And I must taste the blossoms that unfold
Until sweet Isabella’s untouch’d cheek “In its ripe warmth this gracious morning
Fell sick within the rose’s just domain, time.”
Fell thin as a young mother’s, who doth seek So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,
By every lull to cool her infant’s pain: And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:
“How ill she is,” said he, “I may not speak, Great bliss was with them, and great
“And yet I will, and tell my love all plain: happiness
“If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her Grew, like a lusty flower in June’s caress.
tears,
“And at the least ‘twill startle off her cares.” X.

VI. Parting they seem’d to tread upon the air,

Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart
So said he one fair morning, and all day Only to meet again more close, and share
His heart beat awfully against his side; The inward fragrance of each other’s heart.
And to his heart he inwardly did pray She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair
For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide Sang, of delicious love and honey’d dart;
Stifled his voice, and puls’d resolve away-- He with light steps went up a western hill,
Fever’d his high conceit of such a bride, And bade the sun farewell, and joy’d his fill.
Yet brought him to the meekness of a child:
Alas! when passion is both meek and wild! XI.

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All close they met again, before the dusk For them his ears gush’d blood; for them in
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil, death
All close they met, all eves, before the dusk The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil, Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe
Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk, A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:
Unknown of any, free from whispering tale. Half-ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel,
Ah! better had it been for ever so, That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and
Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe. peel.

XII. XVI.

Were they unhappy then?--It cannot be-- Why were they proud? Because their marble
Too many tears for lovers have been shed, founts
Too many sighs give we to them in fee, Gush’d with more pride than do a wretch’s
Too much of pity after they are dead, tears?--
Too many doleful stories do we see, Why were they proud? Because fair orange-
Whose matter in bright gold were best be mounts
read; Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?--
Except in such a page where Theseus’ spouse Why were they proud? Because red-lin’d
Over the pathless waves towards him bows. accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?-
XIII. -
Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,
But, for the general award of love, Why in the name of Glory were they proud?
The little sweet doth kill much bitterness;
Though Dido silent is in under-grove, XVII.
And Isabella’s was a great distress,
Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove Yet were these Florentines as self-retired
Was not embalm’d, this truth is not the less-- In hungry pride and gainful cowardice,
Even bees, the little almsmen of spring- As two close Hebrews in that land inspired,
bowers, Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies,
Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. The hawks of ship-mast forests--the untired
And pannier’d mules for ducats and old lies--
XIV. Quick cat’s-paws on the generous stray-away,-
-
With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt, Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.
Enriched from ancestral merchandize,
And for them many a weary hand did swelt XVIII.
In torched mines and noisy factories,
And many once proud-quiver’d loins did melt How was it these same ledger-men could spy
In blood from stinging whip;--with hollow Fair Isabella in her downy nest?
eyes How could they find out in Lorenzo’s eye
Many all day in dazzling river stood, A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt’s pest
To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood. Into their vision covetous and sly!
How could these money-bags see east and
XV. west?--
Yet so they did--and every dealer fair
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.
And went all naked to the hungry shark;

5
XIX. So on a pleasant morning, as he leant
Into the sun-rise, o’er the balustrade
O eloquent and famed Boccaccio! Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent
Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon, Their footing through the dews; and to him
And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow, said,
And of thy roses amorous of the moon, “You seem there in the quiet of content,
And of thy lilies, that do paler grow “Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade
Now they can no more hear thy ghittern’s “Calm speculation; but if you are wise,
tune, “Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.
For venturing syllables that ill beseem
The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme. XXIV.

XX. “To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount

“To spur three leagues towards the Apennine;
Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale “Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun
Shall move on soberly, as it is meet; count
There is no other crime, no mad assail “His dewy rosary on the eglantine.”
To make old prose in modern rhyme more Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont,
sweet: Bow’d a fair greeting to these serpents’ whine;
But it is done--succeed the verse or fail-- And went in haste, to get in readiness,
To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet; With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman’s
To stead thee as a verse in English tongue, dress.
An echo of thee in the north-wind sung.
XXV.
XXI.
And as he to the court-yard pass’d along,
These brethren having found by many signs Each third step did he pause, and listen’d oft
What love Lorenzo for their sister had, If he could hear his lady’s matin-song,
And how she lov’d him too, each unconfines Or the light whisper of her footstep soft;
His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad And as he thus over his passion hung,
That he, the servant of their trade designs, He heard a laugh full musical aloft;
Should in their sister’s love be blithe and glad, When, looking up, he saw her features bright
When ‘twas their plan to coax her by degrees Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight.
To some high noble and his olive-trees.
XXVI.
XXII.
“Love, Isabel!” said he, “I was in pain
And many a jealous conference had they, “Lest I should miss to bid thee a good
And many times they bit their lips alone, morrow:
Before they fix’d upon a surest way “Ah! what if I should lose thee, when so fain
To make the youngster for his crime atone; “I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow
And at the last, these men of cruel clay “Of a poor three hours’ absence? but we’ll
Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone; gain
For they resolved in some forest dim “Out of the amorous dark what day doth
To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him. borrow.
“Good bye! I’ll soon be back.”--”Good bye!”
XXIII. said she:--
And as he went she chanted merrily.

6
XXVII. And on her couch low murmuring, “Where?
O where?”
So the two brothers and their murder’d man
Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno’s XXXI.
stream
Gurgles through straiten’d banks, and still But Selfishness, Love’s cousin, held not long
doth fan Its fiery vigil in her single breast;
Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream She fretted for the golden hour, and hung
Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan Upon the time with feverish unrest--
The brothers’ faces in the ford did seem, Not long--for soon into her heart a throng
Lorenzo’s flush with love.--They pass’d the Of higher occupants, a richer zest,
water Came tragic; passion not to be subdued,
Into a forest quiet for the slaughter. And sorrow for her love in travels rude.

XXVIII. XXXII.

There was Lorenzo slain and buried in, In the mid days of autumn, on their eves
There in that forest did his great love cease; The breath of Winter comes from far away,
Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win, And the sick west continually bereaves
It aches in loneliness--is ill at peace Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay
As the break-covert blood-hounds of such Of death among the bushes and the leaves,
sin: To make all bare before he dares to stray
They dipp’d their swords in the water, and did From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel
tease By gradual decay from beauty fell,
Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur,
Each richer by his being a murderer. XXXIII.

XXIX. Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes

She ask’d her brothers, with an eye all pale,
They told their sister how, with sudden speed, Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes
Lorenzo had ta’en ship for foreign lands, Could keep him off so long? They spake a tale
Because of some great urgency and need Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes
In their affairs, requiring trusty hands. Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom’s
Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed, vale;
And ‘scape at once from Hope’s accursed And every night in dreams they groan’d aloud,
bands; To see their sister in her snowy shroud.
To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow,
And the next day will be a day of sorrow. XXXIV.

XXX. And she had died in drowsy ignorance,

But for a thing more deadly dark than all;
She weeps alone for pleasures not to be; It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,
Sorely she wept until the night came on, Which saves a sick man from the feather’d
And then, instead of love, O misery! pall
She brooded o’er the luxury alone: For some few gasping moments; like a lance,
His image in the dusk she seem’d to see, Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall
And to the silence made a gentle moan, With cruel pierce, and bringing him again
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air, Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

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XXXV. XXXIX.

It was a vision.--In the drowsy gloom, “I am a shadow now, alas! alas!

The dull of midnight, at her couch’s foot “Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling
Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb “Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,
Had marr’d his glossy hair which once could “While little sounds of life are round me
shoot knelling,
Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom “And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute “And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,
From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears “Paining me through: those sounds grow
Had made a miry channel for his tears. strange to me,
“And thou art distant in Humanity.
XXXVI.
XL.
Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow
spake; “I know what was, I feel full well what is,
For there was striving, in its piteous tongue, “And I should rage, if spirits could go mad;
To speak as when on earth it was awake, “Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,
And Isabella on its music hung: “That paleness warms my grave, as though I
Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake, had
As in a palsied Druid’s harp unstrung; “A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss
And through it moan’d a ghostly under-song, “To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me
Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars glad;
among. “Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel
“A greater love through all my essence steal.”
XXXVII.
XLI.
Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright
With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof The Spirit mourn’d “Adieu!”--dissolv’d, and
From the poor girl by magic of their light, left
The while it did unthread the horrid woof The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;
Of the late darken’d time,--the murderous As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,
spite Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,
Of pride and avarice,--the dark pine roof We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,
In the forest,--and the sodden turfed dell, And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:
Where, without any word, from stabs he fell. It made sad Isabella’s eyelids ache,
And in the dawn she started up awake;
XXXVIII.
XLII.
Saying moreover, “Isabel, my sweet!
“Red whortle-berries droop above my head, “Ha! ha!” said she, “I knew not this hard life,
“And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet; “I thought the worst was simple misery;
“Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed “I thought some Fate with pleasure or with
“Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold strife
bleat “Portion’d us--happy days, or else to die;
“Comes from beyond the river to my bed: “But there is crime--a brother’s bloody knife!
“Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom, “Sweet Spirit, thou hast school’d my infancy:
“And it shall comfort me within the tomb. “I’ll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,
“And greet thee morn and even in the skies.”

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XLIII. XLVII.

When the full morning came, she had devised Soon she turn’d up a soiled glove, whereon
How she might secret to the forest hie; Her silk had play’d in purple phantasies,
How she might find the clay, so dearly prized, She kiss’d it with a lip more chill than stone,
And sing to it one latest lullaby; And put it in her bosom, where it dries
How her short absence might be unsurmised, And freezes utterly unto the bone
While she the inmost of the dream would try. Those dainties made to still an infant’s cries:
Resolv’d, she took with her an aged nurse, Then ‘gan she work again; nor stay’d her care,
And went into that dismal forest-hearse. But to throw back at times her veiling hair.

XLIV. XLVIII.

See, as they creep along the river side, That old nurse stood beside her wondering,
How she doth whisper to that aged Dame, Until her heart felt pity to the core
And, after looking round the champaign wide, At sight of such a dismal labouring,
Shows her a knife.--”What feverous hectic And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,
flame And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:
“Burns in thee, child?--What good can thee Three hours they labour’d at this travail sore;
betide, At last they felt the kernel of the grave,
“That thou should’st smile again?”--The And Isabella did not stamp and rave.
evening came,
And they had found Lorenzo’s earthy bed; XLIX.
The flint was there, the berries at his head.
Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance?
XLV. Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?
O for the gentleness of old Romance,
Who hath not loiter’d in a green church-yard, The simple plaining of a minstrel’s song!
And let his spirit, like a demon-mole, Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance,
Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard, For here, in truth, it doth not well belong
To see skull, coffin’d bones, and funeral stole; To speak:--O turn thee to the very tale,
Pitying each form that hungry Death hath And taste the music of that vision pale.
marr’d,
And filling it once more with human soul? L.
Ah! this is holiday to what was felt
When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt. With duller steel than the Persèan sword
They cut away no formless monster’s head,
XLVI. But one, whose gentleness did well accord
With death, as life. The ancient harps have
She gaz’d into the fresh-thrown mould, as said,
though Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord:
One glance did fully all its secrets tell; If Love impersonate was ever dead,
Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know Pale Isabella kiss’d it, and low moan’d.
Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well; ‘Twas love; cold,--dead indeed, but not
Upon the murderous spot she seem’d to dethroned.
grow,
Like to a native lily of the dell: LI.
Then with her knife, all sudden, she began
To dig more fervently than misers can.

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In anxious secrecy they took it home, O Melancholy, linger here awhile!
And then the prize was all for Isabel: O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!
She calm’d its wild hair with a golden comb, O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,
And all around each eye’s sepulchral cell Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us--O sigh!
Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;
With tears, as chilly as a dripping well, Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily,
She drench’d away:--and still she comb’d, and And make a pale light in your cypress glooms,
kept Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.
Sighing all day--and still she kiss’d, and wept.
LVI.
LII.
Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe,
Then in a silken scarf,--sweet with the dews From the deep throat of sad Melpomene!
Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby, Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze And touch the strings into a mystery;
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,-- Sound mournfully upon the winds and low;
She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did For simple Isabel is soon to be
choose Among the dead: She withers, like a palm
A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by, Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.
And cover’d it with mould, and o’er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet. LVII.

LIII. O leave the palm to wither by itself;

Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour!--
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, It may not be--those Baalites of pelf,
And she forgot the blue above the trees, Her brethren, noted the continual shower
And she forgot the dells where waters run, From her dead eyes; and many a curious elf,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; Among her kindred, wonder’d that such
She had no knowledge when the day was dower
done, Of youth and beauty should be thrown aside
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace By one mark’d out to be a Noble’s bride.
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten’d it with tears unto the core. LVIII.

LIV. And, furthermore, her brethren wonder’d

much
And so she ever fed it with thin tears, Why she sat drooping by the Basil green,
Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it And why it flourish’d, as by magic touch;
grew, Greatly they wonder’d what the thing might
So that it smelt more balmy than its peers mean:
Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew They could not surely give belief, that such
Nurture besides, and life, from human fears, A very nothing would have power to wean
From the fast mouldering head there shut Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures
from view: gay,
So that the jewel, safely casketed, And even remembrance of her love’s delay.
Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.
LIX.
LV.

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Therefore they watch’d a time when they Spirits of grief, sing not your “Well-a-way!”
might sift For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die;
This hidden whim; and long they watch’d in Will die a death too lone and incomplete,
vain; Now they have ta’en away her Basil sweet.
For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift,
And seldom felt she any hunger-pain; LXII.
And when she left, she hurried back, as swift
As bird on wing to breast its eggs again; Piteous she look’d on dead and senseless
And, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there things,
Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair. Asking for her lost Basil amorously:
And with melodious chuckle in the strings
LX. Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry
After the Pilgrim in his wanderings,
Yet they contriv’d to steal the Basil-pot, To ask him where her Basil was; and why
And to examine it in secret place: ‘Twas hid from her: “For cruel ‘tis,” said she,
The thing was vile with green and livid spot, “To steal my Basil-pot away from me.”
And yet they knew it was Lorenzo’s face:
The guerdon of their murder they had got, LXIII.
And so left Florence in a moment’s space,
Never to turn again.--Away they went, And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,
With blood upon their heads, to banishment. Imploring for her Basil to the last.
No heart was there in Florence but did mourn
LXI. In pity of her love, so overcast.
And a sad ditty of this story born
O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away! From mouth to mouth through all the
O Music, Music, breathe despondingly! country pass’d:
O Echo, Echo, on some other day, Still is the burthen sung--”O cruelty,
From isles Lethean, sigh to us--O sigh! “To steal my Basil-pot away from me!”

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